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ScanRobot could digitize 1,187 pages of 'Lord of the Rings' in less than an hour
The ScanRobot, by German robotics firm Treventus Mechatronics, is able to scan entire books without any help from a human — not even to turn the page. It cradles books so that they remain open at a 60° angle, and then it dips a prism-shaped scanner down between the pages. The pages stick to the wedge as it rises and flashes the pages with LED lights. Air jets turn the pages when the scanning is done, and the ScanRobot keeps on going until the book is fully digitized, knocking out 25 pages each minute.
With e-readers and online books becoming more and more popular, technology like this means it's only a matter of time before you can find any book you like on the net.
Click Continue to see how the ScanRobot handles and scans entire volumes.
By Traveler at 11:25 AM ON 09/09/08
Is it just photographing them, or actually translating the text into coumputer code? Really impresive device.
By Kaelin at 4:53 PM ON 09/09/08
This device could have far reaching effects in this information age than even the computer because not everyone has or wants a computer but far more people are able to at least read. I hope the companies that charge outrageous fees for textbooks will wake up with nightmares once they realize the full implications of this device. This scanner could eventually enable everyone to have any book (or every book) in electronic form at their fingertips.
By Anonymous at 5:45 AM ON 09/10/08
To TRAVELER:
You could say, that it is just photographing it, but you could say that of any scanner, since a photograph and a scan are simply a 2d array of colours captured at a specific resolution.
The difference being that a scanner avoids outside sources of light, to capture the true colour of the object.
But this can be then be fed to an OCR program to transform that into digital text. (into ASCII)
By wahoo at 4:53 PM ON 09/10/08
This is going to make so much knowledge available to the world at large.
on your cellphone!
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wahoo:
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